Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) (22 page)

New Yorkers scoffed and jumped out of the way, burning me with their dirty looks and judging eyes. The yellow of a cab shone like a beacon in front of me.

I ran for it without thought or pause or respect for my surroundings. The heavy leather of a handbag may have even grazed my shoulder in a glancing blow, but I didn’t care. Words thrummed in my head in time with the memory of her heartbeat, building and buzzing around my brain until I almost couldn’t stand it. The not knowing, the unlikelihood—it was all too much.

“The Winthrop Building. Fast as you can go,” I demanded abruptly to the cabbie, but he didn’t bat an eye at my brusque delivery—grunts and commands were the nature of more than half of New York City.

I dug in my bag for my wallet and fished out the first bill I came to. With a swift thrust, I dropped it through the plexiglass window and jumped out while the last notes of his screeching tires still rung in the air.

Pigeons panicked and people swerved as I wove my way through them, and a woman strummed a guitar on the corner.

The building was locked after hours, but being the CEO afforded me access to the keyless entry code on the main door. Until today, I could honestly say I’d never broken in to my office building before.

Sixteen smashes of the elevator call button, another code, and a fidgety ride later, I stepped off onto the fifteenth floor in all of my sweaty glory and strode straight for Human Resources.

The lights were dimmed, and once again, the outer door to Cynthia’s office door was locked, but nothing could stop me at this point. Not a lock and certainly not my morals.

I ran to my office at a near sprint and around the back of my desk, yanking drawers open one by one in search of my old master key that opened all of the individual office doors. I hadn’t had a need for it in years, so it took me several minutes of digging through pounds of junk to find it.

Priority for tomorrow: My desk needed to be fucking reorganized.
Stat.

Mud under my fingernails from practice, I clutched the key tightly and jogged back down the hall.

With a turn and a click, I was in, moments away from officially violating half a dozen privacy laws.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the drawer of the filing cabinet slid open with ease, laughing maniacally to myself before trailing into words.

“Of course it’s not fucking locked. It’s not like she was expecting a
fucking psychopath
to break into her office and dig through it.”

Like fluttering wings, my fingers shuffled through the labels, knowing Cynthia followed an unbreakable filing system. Nothing was ever out of order or place, and finding it would be easy enough.

Not knowing the actual wording of the label challenged me a little bit, but it wasn’t more than five minutes before I was pulling it out of its spot and cracking it open.

Tracing the lines of the employee names, I ran my finger down the page, muttering through last names until the one I wanted stood out in stark relief.

“Cummings, Georgia.” I slid it across the page in some kind of slow-motion daydream until the other column sealed my fate in undeniable bold text.

TAPRoseNEXT.

Some Kind of Wonderful.

G
ary clicked to the next PowerPoint slide, stating something about the cost effectiveness of
blah blah blah…
Who knows what he was talking about by that point? We’d been in the meeting for over two hours, and I was seconds away from losing my cool.

My stomach growled its irritation.

I glanced at my watch and noted it was five minutes past three, which meant it was five minutes past my daily scheduled sugar fix. I had a Greek yogurt and a leftover piece of cherry cheesecake sitting inside the break room fridge with my name on it.

Conclusion: Someone needed to end this or I was going to end Gary.

It was Thursday afternoon, and it’d been five whole days since I’d had any real private interaction with Kline. We’d texted a lot, snuck a few minutes to chat and say hello here and there, and even had lunch together twice, but he’d been unbelievably swamped with work and activities and I was still one hundred percent determined to keep a professional relationship in the office. The combination of all that crap had put the kibosh on substantial alone time. And let me tell you, the memory of last weekend had my anticipation riding at an all-time high.

Gary plodded over to his laptop, tapping around on the keys. The man moved like a turtle. He was a genius when it came to numbers, but a moron when it came to social cues. While everyone in the room was moments away from falling face first into a coma, he appeared to think we had all the time in the world to discuss more goddamn numbers.

I was numbered the fuck out.

“And if you’ll just give me a minute here,” he mouth-breathed, licking his lips and clicking away. “I’ll pull up another spreadsheet that documents how effective we’ve been in narrowing down our target ratios for the last financial quarter.”

Jesus Christ in a peach tree.

My stomach roared its impatience. Hunger pangs. Crazy, loud hunger pangs. It’s a mystery no one else heard it over Gary’s droning.

The flash of a text notification caught my eye.

Kline: Was that your stomach, Cummings?

Okay. Obviously,
someone
heard them.

The handsome bastard was sitting beside me. Honestly, I had no idea why he was subjecting himself to this meeting. It was solely for my marketing team. I glanced at Kline out of the corner of my eye, scratching the side of my face with my middle finger. His body jerked noticeably with the effort to conceal his laugh.

Me: It’s 3:05pm, Brooks.

Kline: Ah, right. Georgie’s snack time. What was I thinking?

Me: I don’t know, but if you don’t end this soon, I will murder Gary with my pen.

Fighting a smile, he subtly nodded his head in understanding as he set his phone down on the table. My eyes trailed to his forearms—sleeves rolled up, hard muscles and thick veins on display. To quote Uncle Jesse,
Have mercy.
If I hadn’t been so damn hungry, I’d have happily sat through this tedious meeting just to gawk at those glorious arms. They were a beacon of muscly man delight.

Gary chuckled, seemingly entertained by himself. His monotone voice penetrated my daydreams about Kline’s forearms, officially popping my Big-dicked Brooks fantasy bubble.

I tapped my pen against my notepad.
Shut Gary up. Now.

Kline knew it was a warning. He flashed a secret grin, eyes crinkling at the corners. God, his eyes, they were this flawless shade of blue—so bright, so vibrant. Montana-sky blue.

I’d started to make a game out of nicknaming Kline’s eyes. Those ever-changing blue retinas could be Montana-sky blue one day or, like today, M&M’s blue. But that probably had more to do with the starvation setting in than anything else.

Mmmmmmm, M&M’s.
I’d have devoured a bag of that candy-coated chocolate goodness.

“Fantastic work, Gary,” Kline interrupted moments later. “I think we can all agree we’ve gained valuable information on Brooks Media’s projections for the fiscal year.”

Everyone in the room nodded, agreeing far too enthusiastically.

I
knew
I wasn’t the only one dying a slow death with each PowerPoint GoodTime Gary put on the projection screen.

Gary started to respond, but Kline stood up from his chair. “Go ahead and send the materials out to the rest of the team. That way all departments within Brooks Media can see how they’ve contributed to another fruitful quarter.”

“Oh, okay, but—”

“Really great work, Gary.” Kline patted him on the back, not giving him an inch. “I think we can officially say, successful meeting adjourned.”

My coworkers scattered faster than roaches when light flooded the room. I followed their lead when I realized Kline would be tied up with Gary for a few more minutes. My stomach couldn’t wait. I damn near sprinted to the break room, all kinds of ready to dig into my snacks. Would I start with my yogurt and then move on to the cheesecake? Or would I just go for it and dig into the cherry cheesecake first?

The world was my oyster, baby.

“Uh oh,” Dean announced, walking out of the break room. “It’s a quarter after three and Georgia isn’t eating?” he teased, making a show of glancing between my face and his watch.

“Yeah, GoodTime Gary gave a go at murder by numbers in our quarterly marketing meeting. If Kline hadn’t cut it short, I think I would’ve staged a riot.”

“Well, I’m sorry to tell ya, cupcake, but inside there isn’t any better. Ivanna Swallow is on her selfie break and she has
blowregard
for anyone but the spoon she’s currently sucking yogurt off of for Instagram’s sake.”

I groaned.

“Head down, don’t make eye contact, and you should be fine.” He grinned, slapping my ass as he walked past me and down the hall.

Leslie was sitting at one of the break room tables, doing exactly what Dean said she was doing—taking a selfie of a spoon in her mouth. She could probably describe her life in a series of hashtags.

Hashtag, my spoon is so sexy.

Hashtag, my lips bring all the boys to the yard.

Hashtag, my life’s goal is to be a walking bonertime.

“Hey, Leslie,” I tossed over my shoulder as I headed for the most important thing in the room. The fridge.

“O-M-G. You’re, like, never going to believe how adorable people are.”

My phone buzzed in my hand. Thinking it might be Kline begging for a rescue, I let my heart overpower my stomach and paused to look. No message from Kline, but the TapNext icon was aglow with a message from Ruck. He’d been messaging me in a steady stream ever since Monday night, and I had to admit, he never failed to amuse me.

BAD_Ruck (3:11PM): Lizards or Birds?

Lizards or fucking birds
? Jesus.

The sadistic bastard had talked me into this little game by starting it with normal choices. Pillows or blankets, candy or pizza—he’d been getting a real kick out of asking me which thing I’d rather have in bed with me.
You can only have one
, he’d say. With this kind of choice, the decision was a struggle for a different reason.

TAPRoseNEXT (3:11PM): Neither, you lunatic.

My stomach growled, reminding me that I didn’t have time for Ruck and his random get-to-know-you choices right now.

Opening the fridge, I started searching for my snack-time loot. I didn’t respond to Leslie, knowing full well she’d just prattle on. If Gary was the prime example of not understanding social cues, Leslie was the girl who didn’t care about those cues. In her hashtag and selfie-driven mind,
everyone
wanted to know what she had to say.

For fuck’s sake, where is my food?

“Seriously,” she called, completely oblivious that I’d left a two-minute pause for a reason. “People are, like, so cute. I just ate a turkey sandwich named Gary, and now I’m eating a yogurt named Georgia.”

I stopped mid-rummage and slowly stood, glowering at Leslie over the fridge door.

Her answering grin told me that my eyes weren’t
actually
shooting out death rays.

“How cute is that?” She held up the half-eaten cup of yogurt.
My
half-eaten cup of yogurt.

“People are naming the food in the break room. I just
can’t even
. It’s totes adorbs.” She went back to wrapping her crazy-huge lips around the spoon that was feeding her
my fucking yogurt
.

It had to be severely unhealthy to want to kill two of your coworkers in the same day.

I took a deep breath, counting to ten in my head.

One-Don’t-Kill-Leslie

Two-Don’t-Kill-Leslie

Three-Don’t-Kill-Leslie…

By the time I reached ten, my hands felt less stabby.

“Hey, Leslie?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Uh-huh?” she responded, mouth full of yogurt.

“So, that turkey sandwich named Gary was actually just Gary’s turkey sandwich. He wrote his name on it so no one else would eat it.”